New Project on Democratic Competences at Pedagogic Universities

In January 2018 the EWC launched a new joint project within the Schools for Democracy Programme – “Competences for Democratic Culture in Pre-Service Training in Ukraine”. The Project will be aimed at a deeper integration of civic and social competences into universities courses of the future primary school teachers. The Project will be carried out in cooperation with Borys Grinchenko University of Kyiv and Center of Education Monitoring (Kyiv).

07/02/2018

The Project started with a four day training 20-24 January 2018 in Kyiv. The training gathered teams from three leading pedagogic universities in Ukraine: Borys Grinchenko University of Kyiv, Mykhaylo Dragomanov National Pedagogic University (Kyiv) and Mykhaylo Kotsyubynskyy State Pedagogic University of Vinnytsya. Olha Kotenko, Director of Pedagogic Institute at Borys Grinchenko University of Kyiv and Project Coordinator opened the training together with Iryna Sabor, Senior Advisor at the European Wergeland Centre, stressing the importance of this project in the European context, where there is a growing understanding that democratic competences need to be developed at school. Participants were also e-greeted by Christopher Reynolds from the Council of Europe.

The training agenda focused on the work with the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture, documents and learning resources on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights as well as discussion of approaches and ways of developing democratic competences of the future teachers. The trainer team – Head Trainer Khrystyna Chushak, Chief Researcher at the Institute for Ukrainian Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and Marzena Rafalska, expert of the Council of Europe and European Wergeland Centre in Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights – point out, that “the training gathered agents of change in these pedagogic universities who will bring the current school reforms into pre-service teacher training, thus contributing to major transformation of school education in Ukraine”.

After the training the team of experts will continue working on integrating democratic competences into their study courses and piloting the new approaches in summer semester 2018.